1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a metadata generating apparatus that can easily generate metadata of a private content constituted by still image data, moving image data, and the like produced by an individual.
2. Related Art
According to spread of a digital camera and a cellular phone with a camera in recent years, it is becoming extremely easy to photograph a large quantity of videos and images and store photographed image data in a storage such as a personal computer or a storage medium such as a compact disk or a digital video disk as private contents in addition to public contents made public on television programs broadcasted or web pages. It is essential to add metadata to the private contents including the large quantity of videos and images in order to retrieve the private contents efficiently.
A photographing date and time is automatically stored in an image or a video photographed by a digital camera or a digital video camera as metadata. However, the metadata is insufficient in term of efficient retrieval. Moreover, systems for creating metadata such as Dublin Core and MPEG-7 have been established. However, work for creating and inputting metadata on the basis of the systems requires skill. Thus, it is difficult for general users, who are not specialists, to create metadata.
Therefore, there has been proposed an information processing method in an image processing apparatus including an event storing unit that is capable of storing plural pieces of event information including at least information on time and an information storing unit that is capable of storing object data having additional information including at least information on time. An even information relation judging unit judges whether an event and the object data are related on the basis of the event information and the additional information. Information representing the object data is displayed such that a result of the judgment is recognizable in an event display unit. (See, for example, JP-A-2003-303210 (Claim 1 and FIGS. 1 and 13.)
However, the example described in JP-A-2003-303210 has an unsolved problem in that it is necessary to prepare event information such as schedule data and a date and time of the event information has to be maintained with high reliability, causing troubles for a user. There is also an unsolved problem in that it is impossible to retrieve a private content when event information is not prepared.